The family of Alistair Darling exploited a loophole in tax rules to avoid death duties worth tens of thousands of pounds.

The Chancellor received a £38,500 windfall when his father died leaving a will designed to minimise his children's inheritance tax bill.

Furthermore, Mr Darling has declined to say whether he is using a second avoidance method involving the sale of his mother's £1.4m mansion.

He is not the only Cabinet Minister using death-duty loopholes. Environment Secretary Hilary Benn is exploiting a scheme designed to cut the potential tax bill on his father,

Left-winger Tony Benn's £4m Notting Hill home

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No surprises here. A left-winger in a 4,000,000.00 home? He needs to spread it around a bit. What a load of phranastic hypocrites!

They're all at it. Even Thatcher has her estate in the required form to avoid IHT. I find it truly revolting from the lefties though as they are the biggest gobshite hypocrites.

What makes me angry about all these taxes is that many are deliberately 'grey'. This is to prevent the proles such as myself using them. When some scum politician uses it though it's nodded through. The only real answer for the common man is to play politicians at their own game and become even more dishonest than they are when it comes to taxes.